13.1.08

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

Will someone please explain why I am not reading Marion Lignana Rosenberg's work every day in a newspaper? Her recent estimation (for Newsday) of Anna Netrebko, whom she chose (reluctantly) as the worst performance in opera for 2007, is so right: "Call it the reverse Midas touch: Everything this cavalier, inexplicably ballyhooed soprano sings turns to rubbish dreck - all look-at-me chutzpah, no substance, no soul. Study your scores, girl!" Read the rest of Marion's take on the year that was. [Vilaine Fille]

Still on a Dante high after this summer in Siena, I almost spat out my coffee recently when reading David Owen's Shouts & Murmurs piece, in the January 7 issue of my favorite magazine. [The New Yorker]

Thanks to an article by Olivier Zilbertin in Le Monde, I came across this amazing French Web site on history, written by a team of historians and chock full of helpful resources. [Herodote]

The ever-sharp Tyler Green has an interview with Dorothy Kosinski, the incoming director of the Phillips Collection, about that beloved museum's future. I am with Tyler 100%: the Phillips is my hometown museum, and down with the Impressionists! [Modern Art Notes]

Well, it had to happen sometime. Via Scott Spiegelberg, there is a page on Classical music blogs at a certain online encyclopedia. Someone (other than your humble moderator) should add something about Ionarts. One of the site's editors, pondering things to add to the article, asks the question, "Who reads classical music blogs?" You would know. [Wikipedia]

Tim Page, on his way out the door to California, has published an incisive and complete assessment of the tenure of Leonard Slatkin as Music Director of the National Symphony. By interviewing himself. Are you serious? That's what I said. [Washington Post]

And the torch is passed to Anne Midgette, who has published her first piece as Interim Classical Music Critic, a review of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. [Washington Post]

Not that I was not already depressed enough: David Nishimura had to let us know about an ancient Christian church in Iraq that is the latest cultural casualty. [Cronaca]

AC Douglas is a journalist for the New Yorker? I remember him saying a few years ago that he had been asked if he would write something for one of the NY prints, but he demanded complete editorial control and no agreement was made. Has he been retained more recently?